Power Distance Orientation and Perceived Insider Status: A Social Identity Perspective

Previous studies have mostly focused on how power distance-oriented employees react to leader treatment in fostering leader justice evaluations. However, it remains unclear how power distance orientation may impact the way individuals react to leader treatment in evaluating their social identities. Taking a social identity perspective, we investigated how team-based leader treatment can impact the relationship between power distance orientation and perceived insider status. In particular, building upon the heuristic-systematic model of information processing, we argue that high power distance-oriented individuals are more likely to use both relative leader social support and team-level leader social support information as social cues to adjust their identities. Hypotheses were tested using a sample of 631 employees on 78 teams with multilevel modeling. We found an interaction effect between individual power distance orientation and relative leader social support on perceived insider status, such that the negative relationship between power distance orientation and perceived insider status would be mitigated when members receive high relative leader social support. In addition, this interaction effect was stronger when the team-level leader social support mean was high or team-level leader social support differentiation was low. Furthermore, the above three-way interaction effects were transmitted to influence employees’ affective commitment and turnover intention. Theoretical and practical implications for power distance orientation are discussed.